Typical Slut: The German

The German watched my cleavage, as if he expected live bats to fly out of the dark crevice. Shadows flickered on my skin. The wine buzz and nightwind centered me in his gaze. The bar was tinier than my bedroom. We were hidden, like in a secret garden.

Behind the dark crawling vines, vines like cursive—we were that close...

On the wind drifted his sweet scent. I felt hungry. The nightsmoke wind and the bar’s reddened walls curled around our shoulders. The scent of smoke and the full moon lulled through the open window and the coldness rushed in like gooseflesh, intoxicating me...

The moon always intoxicates. His scent and the moon, the smoke, the wine...aroused me.

He came closer.

The German’s face leaned into me with his question. "Why did you wear this?" He sharply motioned to my fleshy, full breasts, caged in the black dress I wore, tightly. Black lacing on skin.

I looked down at my body, my round breasts and the laces. I told the truth.

"It was on my floor..." His eyes narrowed. He enjoyed this humiliation. I felt excited. I watched him, he watched me. My eyes, his eyes...my eyes, his eyes—on my chest. I felt the delicious tickle of the sweet harshness of his cold words, his perverse inquisition. He really was having none of it. (Was it really that slutty?) I smiled. Yes.

"I wore it earlier to school..."

The German’s eyes lit up like roller coasters when I said "school," and he whispered with a hot hush in my ear. "Why didn’t you wear a nice top? A shirt, buttoned-up? You could still be as comfortable but, instead you chose to wear this."

Yet, while his taunting was sexual, under it all he really needed to know—like, sociologically. The reasons behind things. American culture. Systems.

We discussed philosophy and desire—all the big and small deaths. We talked about war and sex, boundaries and capitalism. He told me he loved my breasts and I let him touch them, since life is short. We spoke about rock ’n’ roll and drank even more wine, gleaming through a glistening fluid pool of gauzy moon-dreams and flushed sex. I watched him through the shaded fringe of his Britpop boy haircut: long, greasy and shaggy.

He was like Evan Dando or Jarvis Cocker, the more wine I drank.

We were speaking bullshit. It was all tension—tension and clothes screaming to come off.

Yes Sir, yes Sir.

He took me home and sweetly beat me to a bruised pulp. Bruised like crushed pansies, daphnes, violets. Bruised and pretty, weeks later, still bearing flesh and I did not even know I wanted these bruises, that I liked this pain, that I wanted this pain so much it made me and now I am empty of the sensation, and I need the impact.

Stirring me inside...

He took me home, home, home—home to my own home. I took him home, it was erotic sensory overload. The rules were simple: consent and no sex, but, it ended up being one of the most thrilling nights of my life. His too?

Somehow, I doubt it. He knew exactly how to strike and make me scream with envy for a higher, more priceless lost pain, a loss of footing—perdre pied—the pain on the other side of suffering.

Closer than close. So close...so close.

He was a model in a past life. He is the head of a sociological research institute. He is a famous German rocker. He has thousands of records and an Architecture-Digest-worthy flat (I know, he showed me pictures). And, even if that’s not his life and those are pictures of someone else, I liked those pictures. I liked that life. Colorful and modern art hung on the walls like an explorative pastiche. A developed aesthetic. An older man. An intellectual. An academic. A rocker.

Pain-inflicter, licking-wounds-sweetness—a German.

And now, all touch pales to the depth of compassionate demand and caring in each moment of that sweet suffering—that memory I cannot help but stop myself from reliving.

Now? Now, the craving is there. But, it will not be him—his long shadow and uneven teeth and strong, strong hands bruising my insides with the pale-fisted butterfly of impact.

I don’t have his name or number—just bruises.